2024: The Year That Should Have Been So Much More For Reading

Sim recounts the story of a bittersweet, bizarre year in Reading Football Club’s history.

As we bid farewell to 2024, one of the most turbulent years in Reading FC’s history, it’s worth reflecting on just how far we’ve come in the last 12 months.

The Royals took their time getting going in 2023/24 but eventually sealed their League One status with a 2-2 draw at Barnsley in April. Off the pitch, the Dai Yongge era finally stopped in August when Rob Couhig’s purchase of the club went through. That takeover was long in the making and fans have valid concerns over Couhig’s long-term plans, but in the last few months, the behind-the-scenes chaos has been put to bed.

Ruben Selles, backed by a batch of new signings at the tail end of the summer window, has wisely been playing down chances of winning the title, despite guiding Reading to the edge of the automatic places. He even signed a new contract, having turned down an approach from Hull City.

Well, that’s what should have happened.

There’s a version of me out there somewhere in a parallel universe who gets to write the feel-good, comeback story of how Reading’s 2024 turned out OK. About how Reading fans woke from their shared nightmare. About how their anguish over the club they love has been extinguished. About how they’re full of renewed, unbridled hope for 2025. He really is a lucky bastard, that version of me.

Back in this universe, Reading’s 2024 played out more like a Greek tragedy. Not just one that we’ve been watching, but also living through, painful day after painful day. It’s hardly been all bad - an immensely likeable team and management group have given us moments to cherish - but even the most joyful memories feel bittersweet when so much has been done to undermine them in the background.

Ruben dancing on the coach journey back from Barnsley after Reading had just sealed safety. A thrilling final-day turnaround win against Blackpool before thousands of fans stayed behind to show their appreciation for The Great Escape. I’ll always look back on those moments fondly - and plenty more besides - but with some sadness too, knowing that these players and staff were denied the chance to be part of a Reading Football Club that did right by them, that matched their efforts on the pitch and in the dugout with basic levels of competence and stability behind the scenes.

We’ve had it good at times, but we should have had so much more. After the last few years, we’ve deserved so much more.

If only he’d sell the club.

Winning the relegation battle

Reading kicked off 2024 in the perfect way: not just climbing out of the relegation places, but doing so with a last-minute, long-range Femi Azeez winner against Exeter City. And on New Year’s Day too!

Although the Royals dipped back into the bottom four shortly afterwards, a second away win of the season - a cliched gritty, gruelling 1-0 in the driving rain at Stevenage - pushed us back out again. This time it was for good, with a run of six wins, three draws and five losses in the next 14 proving sufficient for League One safety.

Even just on the pitch (more on the other bit later), the first half of Reading’s 2024 was peppered with highs, lows and everything in between.

It featured impressive wins (1-0 against later-promoted Derby County and a 4-0 thrashing of Cambridge United among them), joyous away victories (particularly the 3-1 in front of a sold-out away end at Carlisle United and the 2-0 at Bristol Rovers that took us to the brink of safety), batterings on the road at Portsmouth (4-1) and Bolton Wanderers (5-2) and disappointing home losses (to Shrewsbury Town and Wycombe Wanderers).

Of course, there were also downright frustrating moments (a batch of officiating gaffes at Pride Park) and - as ever with this club - utterly random ones too (a number of Reading fans watching February’s 1-1 draw at Oxford United by climbing up some trees next to the car park.

The biggest high of them all though came on the final day of the season. Reading, already mathematically safe as of a couple of games earlier (a 2-2 at Oakwell did the trick), welcomed a promotion-chasing Blackpool side and beat that promotion-chasing Blackpool side by coming from a goal down to win 3-2.

Depressingly low turnouts for the subsequent lap of honour - sometimes more a lap of dishonour - had become the norm in recent years. Not this time though. This time thousands stayed behind to show their appreciation for the efforts and achievements of players and staff alike.

If you wanted a clear indicator for just how far Reading had come as a football club - away from all the turmoil behind the scenes - this was it. This was the kind of pure, genuine mutual affection between supporters, players and staff that you can’t put a price tag on.

From strength to strength on the pitch

Though progress on the takeover was stubbornly elusive (more on all that later), pre-season performances and results hinted at a team that was more than capable of improving regardless. The Royals saw off higher-calibre teams in Watford, Queens Park Rangers and Hull City, despite losing to Millwall and Cardiff City.

Reading returned to League One action after the summer break by building on that promise: putting in an impressive shift - but being held to a 1-1 draw - in front of the Sky Sports cameras at St Andrews on the opening day. The millions spent on promotion favourites Birmingham City vs a side which had at that stage made no signings whatsoever... that should have had only one winner, but Reading more than held their own.

The first 10 games or so followed a consistent pattern: very good at home, poor away, with the Royals winning all but one of their matches at the SCL in that period and losing all but one on the road.

Reading were thrown a curveball in the middle of that run when Rob Couhig’s takeover bid - which had been rumbling on in the background - collapsed in mid-September. It was the kind of gut-punch which threatened to derail any momentum or morale which had been building, and things seemed to take a distinct turn for the worst when the Royals were well beaten 5-2 at Bolton in the first game after the news broke.

Selles’ side kept plugging away though, maintaining their strong home form by seeing off Huddersfield Town, Burton Albion and Crawley Town... and then things took an altogether surprising turn. Finally, in late October, Reading broke their away-day duck. Yes, they had to ride their luck in their 2-1 win at Exeter City, but who cares? We won away! In these parts, that’s something you never take for granted.

Another fortuitous win a few days later, 1-0 at home to Bristol Rovers, pushed us up to the dizzying heights of sixth in the table. Sixth?! This wasn’t supposed to be happening! Though a 4-1 battering at Stockport County temporarily brought us crashing back down to earth, two draws and a win in our next three demonstrated starkly just how much this team was developing.

Having fashioned a team that could win almost every game on its own patch, Selles was now making the Royals into a force to be reckoned with on the road too. A routine 3-0 win over strugglers Cambridge United at the SCL pushed Reading back into the top six and had us dreaming of staying there for the rest of the season...

...until Selles left a few days later.

If we’re being honest with ourselves, we all knew it was coming. Not just at the back of our minds, but at the forefront too; Selles had done such an impressive job in the face of everything thrown at him: keeping Reading up in 2023/24, then going one better by pushing the team into playoff contention in 2024/25.

It was only a matter of time before a club further up the pyramid came calling. Some will question Selles’ choice of Championship strugglers Hull as his next destination, but the possibility of second-tier job opportunities drying up and the apparent probability of players being sold in January likely combined to force his hand. Crucially, he left successor Noel Hunt with a strong inheritance: a side comfortably ahead of the bottom four, with a clear playing style and strong integration with the academy.

Noel returns to the dugout

Hunt repaid the faith shown in him by the board - who’d surprisingly given him a long-term contract all the way to the summer of 2027 - by picking up a point at title chasers Wycombe Wanderers in his first game. Despite a second crushing confidence blow in the first half of the 2024/25 season, Reading appeared to be weathering the storm.

Two subsequent concerning league games blasted a hole in that thesis though. Reading have had distinctly bad performances in the not-too-distant past of course, but these two showings - against Blackpool (3-0 defeat at home) and Lincoln City (2-0 loss away) were particularly bad. The fact that they’d come right next to each other, and shortly after Selles’ departure, was especially worrying.

They’d also left Hunt waiting ages for his first win as Reading manager. He’d misfired on that front in his initial five-match caretaker spell and again in the opening four this time around, meaning it had been 626 days without a victory since his initial appointment when Northampton came to Town on Boxing Day.

The Royals weren’t great that day, but boy were they ruthless, comfortably seeing off a poor Cobblers side 4-1. Reading also weren’t at their very best a few days later against Mansfield, but defensive resolve saw the hosts through to an impressive 2-1 win. In spite of everything, those back-to-back triumphs ensured that the Royals finish 2024 in sixth. Adjust the table by games played and we’d actually be fifth.

In fact, if you zoom out and look at results for all 92 Football League clubs across the calendar year, Reading would be 15th. 15th! Given all we’ve been through, that is absolutely outstanding.

The Northampton and Mansfield wins also continued a delightful theme of 2024 that has perhaps gone under the radar a tad, but it’s one that deserves to define our year as much as anything else.

Reading have been dealt some absolute body blows this year: the Bearwood training ground saga in mid-March, the collapse of the Couhig takeover in mid-September and Selles’ departure in early December. Each time though the Royals have bounced back: continuing the survival fight in the first half of the year and bolstering the unlikely playoff push in the second half.

Being faced with the prospect of the training ground being sold off, seeing a lifeline takeover snatched away and enduring the loss of a manager who’d been an integral figure at the club would have sunk most teams. Not this one though. And for all we can talk about the roles of individuals in creating a group so resilient, really it’s a collective effort to roll with the punches and stick in the fight.

A year of chaos behind the scenes

And all of that was just what happened on the pitch. It probably hasn’t escaped you that 2024 was also quite the year for Reading Football Club behind the scenes.

There’s only so many times you can try to describe just how much of an absolute travesty Reading’s ownership really is. It’s proven to be viciously incompetent at funding the club on a day-to-day basis (requiring external finance on numerous occasions) and, of course, at selling the damn thing too, but limiting the description of Reading’s off-field turmoil to the ownership wouldn’t be telling the whole story.

In January, a “restructure of the club’s first team coaching staff” due to “ongoing financial challenges” led to the departures of valued personnel in Eddie Niedzwiecki and Andrew Sparkes. They were followed out the door in the following weeks when Tom Holmes, Nelson Abbey, Tom McIntyre and Taylan Harris were sold to bring in much-needed cash.

The same month, Reading fans took to the pitch to voice their fury with how things were going. No supporters of any club should ever be driven to force the abandonment of a game, but that’s exactly what happened when Port Vale came to the SCL on January 13.

What started as the usual tennis-ball disruption soon became a mass of fans invading the pitch in the 16th minute. Though many eventually returned to their seats, a smaller group stayed put in the centre circle until the match was officially called off, ensuring maximum, widespread media attention for Reading’s plight.

In February, Reading were hit by another two-point deduction, this time for failure to pay HMRC. That penalty - the final such penalty of 2024 - pushed the Royals’ overall deduction tally under the current ownership to 18 points, and meant that every subsequent home game has featured supporters chanting for a change of ownership in the 18th minute, as opposed to the 16th.

March was quite the month too, with Reading seemingly going to the brink at one stage. After the club announced on the 10th that it was even open to selling the highly regarded Bearwood Park training ground if that would secure short-term funding, it emerged via The Athletic three days later that Wycombe Wanderers - then owned by Rob Couhig - were interested in such a purchase.

Cue mass panic in the Reading fanbase. The club had been driven to such a desperate situation that a rival League One club felt able to buy one of the jewels in the Royals’ crown, a training ground that was the envy of most teams in the country. It was hard to ignore the possibility that Reading FC was literally being asset-stripped in front of our eyes, and in the hours after the news broke, I for one had a sleepless night of anxiety and fear for the Royals’ future.

Reading confirmed that report the following day, but fans weren’t deterred. A number of them took to Adams Park on the Friday evening to protest, making it clear that they wouldn’t see the club die without a fight.

Immediately - within minutes, really - things started to turn. First it emerged via the Reading Chronicle on the same evening as the Adams Park protest that multiple parties were still interested in buying the club, with “North American buyers” nearest to exclusivity. On the following Monday, citing “seeming planning limitations allowing only Reading FC to use the training grounds”, Wycombe abandoned their purchase of Bearwood.

And not done there, finishing off a lurch from one extreme to the other in a matter of weeks, Reading announced exclusivity with an unnamed party on March 26, with the identity of that buyer soon coming out as Chiron Sports Group.

However, as would later be confirmed in court documents (more on this later), in April the purchaser actually became Redwood Holdings, operated by a certain R Couhig, who finalised a sale of the Chairboys to Kazakhstan billionaire Mikheil Lomtadze a few weeks later.

Reading’s funding shortfall was plugged by Redwood over the coming months, with nine loans totalling around £4.6m being provided from late March to early August, while exclusivity on an outright purchase club was extended first to late May, then to late July, and finally to mid-August.

If you thought April was busy enough, May had other ideas.

First, former CEO Nigel Howe (who was still actively involved in the sale of the club) was among those found to have fallen foul of the FA’s intermediary regulations. He was initially suspended from involvement on contracts and transfers for six months, as well as a subsequent, additional six-month suspension from all football-related activity, but this was reduced on appeal five months later.

A couple of weeks later, head of football operations Mark Bowen was charged with breaches of betting regulations. He had allegedly placed 95 bets on non-Reading games between April 19, 2022 and January 14, 2024 - which he admitted to three months later, being handed a fine and a ban from the FA. In September, The Times reported that Bowen was taking legal action against Reading, having been sacked by the club in July for “bringing the club into disrepute”.

Got all of that?

Let’s take a breather for a minute. Boy was the first half of Reading’s 2024 an exhausting period off the pitch. Any one of those episodes - a pitch invasion, a training ground saga, major progress on a takeover, two senior club staff being charged by the FA - would have been huge enough on their own.

Some of those events impacted us as fans more directly than others, and it’s certainly safe to say that opinions on some of the individuals individuals involved vary dramatically. However you look at it though, Reading’s 2024 - particularly the first half - was a relentless barrage of reminders that this most certainly is not how a football club should be run.

Of course, the summer months and second half of the year weren’t much quieter.

After it had emerged in June that Couhig was leading the race to buy Reading FC, his bid gained momentum in the coming months. By July, completion of his takeover seemed to only be a matter of time. Former Wycombe defender Joe Jacobson was even lined up for a role at Reading behind the scenes, being pictured at the Royals’ pre-season friendly defeat to Cardiff.

In August, Couhig - seemingly convinced that he would imminently hold the keys to Reading Football Club - even went so far as to conspicuously show up at various games, meeting fans, being photographed and changing his Twitter profile picture to one of him stood in front of the Royals’ badge at Bearwood. He’s still got that up now, bless him.

The takeover was about to be done, or so it seemed. Days came and went, but still no confirmation, with fans anxiously looking at the rapidly approaching end of the transfer window, one in which precisely zero signings had been made, despite a number of players leaving at the end of their loan deals, being released or - in the case of Femi Azeez - sold.

August seemed to be elapsing with a whimper, but there was still one twist to come. Befitting the most unpredictable club in the Football League, Reading randomly dropped a statement late on deadline day, noting the inability to get the takeover done before the summer window was shut, but hinting at efforts to make signings anyway, which felt odd given the apparent inability of the club to bring anyone in before the takeover was ratified. Surely this was just bluster? Nope: in came Chem Campbell on loan from Wolverhampton Wanderers.

Despite a flurry of excitement that the deal would be completed in September, when Couhig appeared at The Purple Turtle to tease the start of a new era for the club, his deal collapsed shortly after. We never found out an exact reason for Couhig’s offer not going through, although an October report from The Guardian revealed that a ‘stop notice’ had been placed on any sale of the stadium by Haitong bank.

In between those two bits of news came one of Reading’s many 2024 club statements. This one confirmed a nice development - that an unnamed party had been granted exclusivity (they’re still publicly unnamed) - and a bad one: that the Royals were under a registration embargo from the EFL due to 2022/23 accounts still being overdue from the end of June.

As for Couhig, his hopes of buying the club weren’t entirely dead. The Independent reported in November that he was intent on a transaction “at the previously agreed terms” and was exploring legal action to do so. In December, details of that legal action (made by Couhig’s Redwood company against Dai’s Renhe) came out.

While Reading acknowledged that legal action in their final club statement of the year - one they’d previously committed to giving as part of efforts to improve communication, having been pressured by Sell Before We Dai - there was bigger news in that statement: the stop notice was gone.

Could that clear the way to a takeover in 2025? Only time will tell.

So long and farewell to 2024/hello to 2025

There are plenty of reasons to be pessimistic going into the New Year. The takeover is still dragging along, going so slowly and with so many delays that you can’t really fault anyone who’s already concluded in their mind that it’ll never happen. Funding remains a concern, as does the possibility of administration, and there’s the clear danger that Reading will sell key players in January in order to plug any financial gaps.

That last point would derail the progress of a side that’s done incredibly well so far this season. There is no way that a team which has had to put up with so much disruption this year should be anywhere close to the playoffs, and yet it is. It keeps fighting. It keeps responding to adversity. It keeps refusing to accept defeat.

So long as that continues, Reading stand a chance. Hell, if we somehow come out of January without any major damage to the squad, Reading stand a chance of finishing inside the playoffs! Now wouldn’t that be something?

Then again, it feels a touch unwise to think too much about what the future might hold. 2025 could be the year when Reading get a takeover, finish inside the playoffs and even get promoted - stranger things have happened - but it could be the year when... well, I won’t finish that thought.

If the Couhig takeover had gone through in the summer, we wouldn’t have to entertain such extreme worries. Reading’s situation wouldn’t be perfect and the club would still have an awfully long way to go in its rebuild, but the feeling of existential dread around the Royals’ future would have been expunged.

The future version of me writing the 2025 equivalent of this piece will most likely have gone through either one of the best days of his life - seeing confirmation on his phone that a takeover is finally done - or one of the worst. Perhaps there’ll be several contenders for that latter ‘award’.

Right now though I can’t fully shake my fear for the future, but neither can I lose my stubborn sense of optimism. We’ve been through dark days before and we can do so again. Let’s not give up on Reading Football Club just yet.

Happy New Year from all of us at TTE, and up the ‘Ding!